This biography
could hardly be described as a work of scholarship or of fresh information in
the sense that the author appears to have depended on secondary sources and to
have relied very much on previous biographies of Clive. Robert Clive had a very
controversial career. He played a major role in converting the British interests
in India from a few commercial outposts in Madras and Calcutta on the east
coast and of Bombay in the west to full military, political and administrative
control of the subcontinent. In the early days of his arrival in Bengal in 1756
the British had no imperial aspirations as far as India was concerned and the
outposts under the control of the East India Company were simply there as a
commercial arrangement with the Indians and their rulers. The French also had a
few outposts at that time but again the French had no imperial ambitions. The
country was governed by regional nabobs with the chief nabob in Delhi. The
latter had little executive power or influence over his regional colleagues.
Nevertheless, despite the limited presence of the British, the East India
Company outposts in Madras, Calcutta and Bombay in the mid-1700s were well
developed communities with prosperous and influential British employees and a
military presence, and with the support of the British navy and merchant
marine. There was a strong British influence in terms of architecture, culture,
and social life, particularly in Calcutta in Bengal

Robert Clive was
a young man when he went out to Fort David, close to Madras, as a clerk in the
East India Company. He became involved on the military side because of a few
local crises which occurred between the British community and the local Indian
rulers and some of the French. Clive was born in 1725 in Shropshire where his
family was part of the minor gentry. Like many other famous people; he had an
undistinguished career during and immediately after his schooling. At the age
of 17, and with much influence, he was appointed to a position in India. Clive
first travelled to India on the Winchester, a ship of 500 tonnes, a larger
vessel than the ships commonly employed at the time.He had an eventful journey of nearly one year which included
various catastrophes at sea, including many months in Brazil where the ship was
being repaired after spending much of that time grounded off the coast of Rio.
It is astonishing how sea travel to India at that time, often lasting six
months or more, could have been tolerated, with cramped and unhygienic
conditions, the close contact of so many individuals of different gender,
education, social status and temperament, not to mention the appalling diet. It
is difficult to understand how these small vessels, entirely dependent on sail,
could survive the storms, the uncharted seas and the navigational problems
which prevailed in these early years.

Model of a 1750s ship

As a young man he
appeared to be quite individualistic and he found it difficult to conform to
the conventions of society. He proved to be a person of enormous courage and on
several occasions, when he became involved on the military side in India, he
showed little caution in undertaking the most hazardous actions. His military
victories were mostly against the greatest odds, although history described by
British sources and the current author may exaggerate the disparity between the
British forces and the opposing local Indian troops and their French leaders.

The book gave me
for the first time an insight into the development of India under British rule.
Clive’s exploits up to the time he last left India had not yet established the
full control by the British of the Indian sub-continent and it was before the
diatribes about the East India Company’s activities which were a prominent
feature of Edmond Burke’s political campaign at the end of the eighteenth
century.Followed as Clive was by
other imperialists, the leading Muslim business and the Hindu Nabobs eventually
came under British military protection and economic control some time after
Clive’s third and last visit to India when he was appointed Governor of Bengal,
replacing the local nabobs there.

British rule was
not entirely devoted to exploiting the local population on behalf of the mother
country. An excellent civil service was established along the tradition of the
British colonial system, and some of the Indian troops, under British tutelage,
became gallant and efficient soldiers to serve in later wars involving Britain
and the Empire. This vast country remained under British control until the
independence movement started in the early twentieth century with the evolution
of democratic ideas and the gradual loss of power of the nabobs. Gandhi was of
course the person who spearheaded Indian independence and it was he who was to
cause such distress and sense of loss to the British imperialists, such as Winston
Churchill. Independence probably evolved inpractice as local government gave a thrust to the
aspirations of the people of India, as it did in Ireland in the late nineteenth
and early twenty centuries where control of local government and of education
made it inevitable that the British hegemony would end.

In the final
settlement with the British, India was partitioned into the Hindu dominated
India in the south and the Muslim dominated Pakistan in the north, where, as in
the North of Ireland, religion and its divisive effects has left serious
problems in relation to minorities and the control of Kashmir. Both Pakistan
and India became republics but remained in the British Commonwealth and have
maintained good relations with Britain, unlike the situation inIreland where the effects of the civil
war was to cause a serious alienation among some Irish which now is happily
resolving. We also rashly retired from the Commonwealth in 1949 at the time of
the declaration of a republic and on the impulse of the then Taoiseach Jack
Costello.

Clive was still
in his forties when he returned to India for the third and last time. He had
made an immense amount of money during his times there. He became passionately
interested in entering British politics, but, because of poor judgement and the
many enemies he created among influential politicians and within the East India
Company and the British administrations, he essentially failed as a politician
although he had been a Member of Parliament for some years after his return
from India. He was probably a very unhappy man who’s materialistic and
political ambitions were associated on many occasions with stress and failure,
and with adverse public opinion despite his having many admirers. Because of
his wealth and his conflict with political colleagues and some directors of the
East India Company, he was subjected to a Parliamentary enquiry. Although he was
eventually absolved of serious corruption, it was a time in England where there
was little or no libel law and when the most atrocious charges were made
against prominent people such as Clive which were as difficult to refute as
they were to prove. I expect the nouveau riche and those who enriched
themselves in the service of the Empire were particularly vulnerable.

He died
mysteriously in his early fifties and is buried in an unmarked grave in an
obscure village in the West of England. The exact site of the grave in the
churchyard is not known and the only memorial plaque to him is in the adjoining
church. He married his wife Margaret during his first visit to India after he
had earned renown as a young and successful military strategist and he returned
to England on his honeymoon in triumph and already enjoying some wealth. She lived
for many years after him as Lady Clive and climbed successfully the social ladder
after his death. One of Clive’s great ambitions was to join the aristocracy
with an English peerage but this he never achieved despite the acquisition of a
few fine country houses and estates in the West Country. He was largely snubbed
by leading politicians and by the aristocracy, and his only recompense was an
Irish peerage, one which was considered of secondary importance in English
circles.

On balance I was
glad to have read the book, not in any sense for its literary merits, and its
cohesive structure, but in relatively few pages it gave me an insight into the history
and political development of India as it is to-day. The population of Greater India
at the time of Clive’s first visit was estimated to be 150 million. Its
population to-day is close to 1,100 million. The latter figure does not include
the population of Pakistan. One wonders if we are in complete denial about the
critical effects of the exponential human population increase over the last
century.

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Reasons why...

As a doctor advising patients, I knew that cigarette smoking was the most addictive habit known to Man. At least I thought so until I tried to stop writing. I have written twelve books, and like the smokers, I used to suffer withdrawal effects if I had nothing to write. So, to keep my restlessness at bay, I began to write reviews of all the books I was reading and I found these exercises hugely educational. There are about 130 in all – so far! This blog records some of them , and a few other personal scribbles. Mistakes? There will be many, no doubt, and no doubt they will be mine. This is a very personal contribution to the literature and is in no way an academic text. Enjoy.